Someday
by Lyrical Ballads
Summary: [repost of an old story] "Think of my children!" "You don't have any children."
Disclaimer: Any characters or settings you recognize are not mine.

 **Author's Note:** Like _The Scam_ , this is another old story I decided to post back up. I wrote this a few years ago, then removed it (not really sure why), and after stumbling across it again I decided to clean it up and repost. (Mostly I'm just saddened by the complete lack of Beni-related stories around here, even though I'm not even into fanfiction anymore.)

* * *

 **Someday**

"Excuse me. Are you Rick O'Connell?"

Rick stared at the woman who stood in the doorway of his hotel room, wondering if she was yet another busybody come to gawk at the man who discovered the wealth of Egypt. He wasn't surprised she knew his name. Seemed like everyone in Cairo knew his name these days, ever since he came riding back from Hamunaptra with a sack full of treasure, and he half-expected to see some obnoxious photographer pop out of nowhere and snap a picture of his face. But there were no photographers. There were no journalists, no treasure hunters, no old acquaintances hoping he would remember them in his will. He only saw a woman; just an ordinary woman whose hair and dress were a little too long to be fashionable, and when he looked into her eyes he saw no curiosity, or any hunger for tales of the great lost city and the gold trapped beneath it.

She had weary eyes. Desperate eyes. She sounded desperate too, like it had taken a lot of nerve for her to arrive at his door.

"Yeah, I'm Rick O'Connell," he said. "Who're you?"

She glanced nervously up and down the hallway, wary of footsteps that never came. "Would you mind letting me in?"

"Who are you?" Rick repeated more firmly.

She winced a little when he raised his voice. "My name is Anna," she said. "You're friends with Beni Gabor, aren't you?"

 _Beni_. He should have known that such a desperate looking woman would have something to do with Beni. His old friend had been gone for several days now, trapped forever beneath the ruins of Hamunaptra, and Rick knew he shouldn't miss the two-faced little weasel, but somehow he did. Beni was always around, whether Rick wanted him there or not. He was always sneaking around somewhere, always surviving whatever life threw at him, and now he was all alone out there without a real grave or anything to prove that he had lived at all.

Beni wasn't the sort of person that people wanted to remember.

"If he owes you money, I'll take care of it," Rick told Anna.

She bit her lower lip. "No. It isn't that." Her voice became a little harder, her back a little straighter as she raised her head to look directly at him. " _Please_. I really need to talk to you."

"All right," said Rick. Something about her desperate face and her hard, desperate voice moved him, and he stood aside so she could enter his hotel room. "Anna, huh?" he said as he showed her to a chair. "Beni never mentioned you."

"He mentioned _you_ once or twice," she said. "I saw your name in the papers. I thought you might be able to tell me where he is."

"Actually, uh—it's a little hard to explain."

"He's gone, isn't he? I've been hearing rumors."

"Yeah," said Rick, relieved that he wouldn't have to find some way to gently break the news. It felt good to get the words out in the open. "Beni's gone."

"Oh," said Anna.

That was all she would say for a long moment as she stared first at the oriental rug on the floor, then at the fancy lamp with the frilly shade that sat on a table, until her eyes had found every piece of furniture and decor in the luxurious suite Rick had rented a few days before. He could do without the frilly lampshade, but he figured he could afford to indulge himself for once, now that he was considered Cairo's most successful treasure hunter. He had spent far too many years sleeping in cheap apartments.

Anna finally sighed, letting her breath out slowly, and looked up at Rick with a bitter little smile. "God, what a mess," she said.

Rick had never been good at comforting women. "You want to tell me what this is all about?" he said as gently as he could.

"I _do_ want to, but it's so—it's rather embarrassing. I don't know where to begin."

"Lady, I've seen things you can't even imagine. Nothing you say is going to shock me."

"All right, then." She swallowed nervously, looking down at her lap. "I'm going to have a baby. It's Beni's."

It was Rick's turn to say, "Oh."

"I didn't get a chance to tell him before he left. Now he'll never know."

A baby. Rick couldn't wrap his head around the fact that Beni had actually fathered a baby. He had seen mummies rise from the dead and witnessed the Plagues of Egypt. He had helped save the world from a terrible curse. He had gotten a woman like Evelyn to fall inexplicably in love with him. But he didn't think anything surprised him more than the idea that the woman sitting in front of him was having a child with Beni Gabor.

"You're shocked, aren't you?" she said. "I'm sorry. I just—I didn't know who else I could tell."

"Are you sure Beni's the, uh, the father?"

"Yes," said Anna. She sounded perfectly miserable. "I'm sure."

"So what are you going to do?"

"I don't know. Have the baby, I suppose. It's the least I could do now that he's… now that he's dead."

"I'm sorry," said Rick, not knowing what else to say.

"I'm the one who should be sorry," said Anna. "Getting involved with a man like that."

Rick didn't know why the whole thing surprised him so much, but the situation felt more unreal with every word Anna spoke. It shouldn't surprise him at all, really. Beni wasn't blessed with good looks and had that whiny accent, but now and then—due to some crazy stroke of good luck, or simply a lot of alcohol, or perhaps both—he managed to get women to take a second look at him. Sometimes pitiful women. Sometimes women who pitied him. He shouldn't be surprised that a woman like Anna had been lonely enough to slip into bed with the likes of Beni, but he still couldn't believe that there was a baby who might inherit Beni's shifty, nervous eyes, or his skinny frame, or his whine of a voice. All he could think about was that night on the boat when he pointed his gun at Beni, looking into those wide, scared eyes and listening to that ridiculous, desperate plea: _Think of my children!_

 _You don't have any children_ , Rick had told him.

Beni's response sounded like bullshit at the time— _Someday I might_ —but now Rick was staring at Anna, who said she was going to have Beni's child, and someday wasn't so impossible anymore. Someday had arrived and Beni didn't even know it.

When he thought of Beni, though, he couldn't see him as the treacherous rat who allied himself with Imhotep. He only saw a sad, greedy man who would never get to see his son, or his daughter, now that he was trapped under the sand for all eternity.

Rick wasn't sure what possessed him to do it, but he dug his wallet out of his pocket and held out a generous amount of money to Anna. "Here."

She looked at the money like she had never seen cash before. "What's this?"

"I don't know a thing about kids, but I know they eat up your money real fast."

"I can't possibly take this."

"Look, Beni was my pal. And you need it more than I do."

She finally took the money, though she quickly tucked it into her purse and out of sight, as if she wanted to forget it as soon as possible. "Thank you," she murmured.

"He would have made a lousy father," Rick told her honestly.

"Yes," she said, giving him another bitter smile. "I know."


End file.
